Workshop: Evaluation Strategies and Metrics for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Abstract

The use of online and open education has become popular over the years. Using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) a larger audience can be educated than with traditional means. Yet, maintaining the quality with such a large group can be challenging. The audience is often diverse, have different expectations and vary in their speed of learning. This workshop aims to discuss with audience evaluation strategies and metrics for MOOCs. The workshop will be divided in 4 parts. In the first part the workshop objectives and activities are introduced. After that, this session describes what a MOOC is and how a MOOC can be created, since it is expected audience has no or low level of intimacy with the topic. The second part provides an overview of evaluation strategies and will show the state-of-the-art in MOOC evaluation is. Durint the third part the audience will be challenged to discuss what are suitable strategies and metrics to evaluate a MOOC. If there will be a large audience then the evaluation will be done in smaller groups of 4-6 persons. Each of these groups would be in given the tasks to evaluate a specific part of MOOCs. The fourth sections starts with the presentation of all groups followed by a discussion. After each group presentation, chairs will open the discussion to all audience, aiming to improve the strategies and metrics presented by the group. At the end of this fourth part, the chairs will wrap-up all the groups presentation and have an online discussion in which the participants can vote on a number of suggestions. This will be represented in a graphical view (probably using MindMap, electronic spreadsheet or similar tool). The audience it is not expected to have any previous knowledge about MOOC development or evaluation. Various forms of MOOCS will be demonstrated to provide insight into what constituted a MOOC. The participants do not need any other physical material or software. It is a must for the audience bring a lot of creativity and enthusiasm to help create sharper strategies and metrics for MOOCs' evaluation. If possible, audience should bring laptops to browse Internet and organize in format of slides presentation (e.g.: Power Point, keynote) all the potential strategies and metrics identified by the group and present it to others group. Also for the voting the use of smart phone is encouraged.